UHLC Nota Bene

Whether you are currently enrolled in a Tax Accounting course or have an interest in this area of tax law, the law library has a number of print and electronic sources available. These sources include treatises and practice guides, among others: Tax Accounting by Durwood L. Alkire ( KF6314.A94 ) (available on Lexis Advance ) This is a two volume loose-leaf practice guide that is updated periodically. The print edition contains a subject index. Federal Tax Accounting , by Stephen F. Gertzman (WG&L) (available on Westlaw Next and Thomson Reuters Checkpoint) This is a part of the Warren, Gorham & Lamont series, a well respected collection of tax treatises. Bloomberg BNA Accounting Policy and Practice Portfolios (available through the Bloomberg BNA Tax and Accounting Center database and BloombergLaw.com ). These consist over sixty portfolios dealing with accounting for income taxes, accounting rules and disclosures, special industries and entities, management...

Each semester the law library presents a series of presentations covering legal research topics. These presentations are held at 12 noon on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and will take place in Room 1 BLB (except for Texas Legislative History Research, on Wednesday, February 17, which will be held in Room 115 BLB). We will be offering the following sessions for the Spring 2016 semester (click here for more details): 1. Texas Administrative Agency Research Tuesday, 2/2, Wednesday, 2/3 Emily Lawson, Reference and Research Librarian 2. Researching Oil & Gas Law Tuesday, 2/9, Wednesday, 2/10 Chris Dykes, Reference and Research Librarian 3. Texas Legislative History Research Tuesday, 2/16, Wednesday, 2/17 Robert Clark, Reference and Research Librarian 4. Resources for Legal Practice Tuesday, 2/23, Wednesday, 2/24 Katy Badeaux, Reference and Research Librarian 5. International and Foreign Law Research Tuesday, 3/1, Wednesday, 3/2 Dan Donahue, International and Foreign Law...

This week the Texas State Library and Archives Commission made a portion of the electronic collection of the Texas State Archives searchable online.  The new Texas Digital Archive (TDA) has only just launched, and the current online collection is expected to grow significantly over the next few months; anyone looking for documents and records that are not currently available may want to check back later as the searchable collection grows. Legal researches interested in capital punishment may be interested to know that the State of Texas' execution files are being loaded onto the TDA, and are currently available dating back to 1992.  Former Governor Rick Perry's Executive Office records are also already online, as well as those records of the Governor's Commission for Women that were created during his administration. 

For those of you who might have missed President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, or for anyone who just wants to study the speech more closely, the full text is available in the Congressional Record on FDsys , an online repository of government documents maintained by the U.S. Government Printing Office. FDsys has the full text of the Congressional Record going back to 1994 (including previous State of the Union addresses), all of which is fully searchable. Older volumes of the Congressional Record can be found in print at the library, or in HeinOnline, a database service available on the library’s public computers.    

Courthouse News Service has reported that a recently filed class action suit accuses PACER of systematically overcharging its customers. Many of our readers will be familiar with PACER, which stands for the Public Access to Courts Electronic Records system. PACER is a government-operated, online database that provides access to federal court documents for a fee of 10 cents per page, up to a maximum of three dollars per document. The complaint, filed by Bryndon Fisher against the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts and its director James C. Duff, claims that PACER uses an erroneous formula to count the number of bytes in an HTML document, thereby inflating its page count. “During the past two years,” the complaint claims, “Fisher accessed 184 court docket reports using PACER and was charged and paid a total of $109.40 to the AO for this access…. Over this two-year period, based on the formula contained in the PACER User Manual, Fisher should have been charged $72.40, representin...

Nota Bene has been covering the development of Congress.gov for several years, and the Library of Congress staff behind Congress.gov continues to improve the product. Last month, the Congressional Record Index  was added to Congress.gov, allowing users to search by index terms for content within the Congressional Record.  The Congressional Record Index provides topical access to remarks and activities by members of Congress, individuals, organizations, and legislative business mentioned during daily proceedings. The Congressional Record Index is not a new creation, it is produced online daily and printed monthly by the Congressional Record Index Office . The office creates both the Index (updated dailas well as the  History of Bills and Resolutions that tracks the legislative progress of every piece of legislation introduced in Congress. You can view the indexes for Congressional sessions beginning in 1983 through FDsys   Congress.gov currently hosts the index for...

January 1 of 2016 saw many new laws go into effect for Texas. The measure providing for open-carry of holstered handguns ( HB 910 )  has received much attention, but there are many more laws that will affect Texans in the New Year. Below are just a few of the new laws you may have missed. To see all the laws that went into effect January 1, visit  this list from the Texas Legislature. Texas Franchise Tax: The Texas Franchise tax has been permanently reduced to 0.375 percent, rather than 0.5 percent, of taxable margin for those taxable entities primarily engaged in retail or wholesale trade ( HB 32 ). Uber and Others: Drivers for “transportation network companies” like Uber and Lyft are now required to hold a minimum of $1 million in liability insurance for death, bodily injury and property damage for each incident ( HB 1733 ). Open Government: Most state government bodies are now required to make audio and video of open meetings available online within one week of t...